How to Mirror and Record Your iPhone’s Screen for Free

If you need to mirror an iPhone’s or iPad’s screen, you’ll likely take to the internet and do a Google search. Often, these searches will come up with third-party applications that are cumbersome, expensive — and, because of a hidden feature in macOS — unnecessary.

Whether you want to demonstrate a new app, show off an iPhone feature, or record a how-to video, there’s a built-in (and free) feature in macOS that lets you easily mirror your iOS device to your Mac. Here’s how to do it.

How to Record Your iPhone’s Screen on Mac Using QuickTime

Plug your iOS device into your Mac.

Open QuickTime Player on your Mac.

In QuickTime, click File and New Movie Recording. An important note, it’s New Movie Recording, not New Screen Recording, even though that might be the first option that comes to mind for mirroring purposes.

Click on the arrow next to the record button.

In the dropdown menu that appears, change the Camera input from your default camera to your connected iOS device (You can also change your microphone setting to your iOS device, as well).

At this point, you should be mirroring your iPhone or iPad’s actions to your Mac. It’s not a perfect mirror — there’s a slight latency delay between the two. But it’ll work nicely for demonstration purposes. Of course, you’ll only be mirroring your iOS device’s display. If you want to record a video of your iOS device’s screen, just click on the QuickTime Record button.

To take a screenshot, hold down Command + Shift + 3. This is a keyboard shortcut that takes a screenshot of the specific window that you’re working in — which, in this case, should be QuickTime player.